The City’s transparency initiative has again fallen into neglect. The last data was posted in January (that’s when I first noticed the site was neglected), but the six-week lag time requested in the site’s disclaimer (highlighted in red in the following screen shot) would indicate that data should have already been posted for February. Data for March should be ready in about a week from now. When I have time, I’d like to delve into the data and see what it tells us about the DPW’s responsiveness.

Back in January, SomerStat Analyst Daniel Hadley talked about the City’s intention to post data from other departments and hire a contractor to speed up the frequency of postings. Four months later, no word on either front.

Another question: why is the data only posted in PDF format instead of the Excel spreadsheet from which it was derived? PDFs make it harder to use the datasets, was this intentional?

As the Mayor said on the ACE webpage:

We should not have to tell you we are doing well. We should be able to show we are doing well. And if we are falling short in some areas, then you should be able to see that too.

So what’s the remedy when we see that you are falling short, Mr. Mayor?

Screen shot of the ACE webpage at 2pm on May 5, 2012